DHX29 reduces leaky scanning through an upstream AUG codon regardless of its nucleotide context

On 11 April 2016, NAR published the article ‘DHX29 reduces leaky scanning through an upstream AUG codon regardless of its nucleotide context’ by Vera P. Pisareva, and Andrey V. Pisarev (1).

At the request of the Ethical Committee at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, the Editors are publishing an Expression of Concern regarding this article.

The Editors wish to alert the readers that questions have been raised about the validity of some of the figures presented in this article as detailed below.

Allegations: There are apparent splice junctions between lanes 2/3 and 4/5 in Figure 1B, between lanes 3/4 in Figure 1D, between lanes 4/5 in Figure 3A and between lanes 3/4 in Figure 3B.

Ethical Committee Determination: Authors committed research misconduct in the form of falsification. The Committee finds that failure to adhere to ethical standards evident in the extensive use of unannotated spliced images constitutes reckless behaviour on the part of the Authors.

While these irregularities may not fundamentally affect the results and conclusions of the article, the Editors nonetheless note that such manipulations of data and corresponding figures is unacceptable.

Keith R. Fox, Barry L. Stoddard

Senior Executive Editors